Personally speaking I’d rather have the ants. I know my wife would definitely rather have the ants! It’s just as well as the apartment we live in has ants, little tiny, minuscule ants, so tiny you can hardly see them that find their way into everything. They love anything sweet or sticky. Woe betides you if you leave anything in those two categories out for any length of time! It is absolutely amazing to see the hordes of ants that descend upon the smallest amount of ‘sweety’ stuff in a plate or a cup! You can sure see them then! There’s a couple of lessons there alone!
(E.G. have a look at 2 Kings 7:3ff especially note v9? Or Acts 17:6b!)
The complex in which our apartment is situated has its own colony of another species of ant..Just a little bigger than the ones inside, yet just as amazing and fascinating to watch. I have become so intrigued with these little creatures and then the other day I was outside and was just transfixed with the goings on of a bunch of them trying to get the body of another insect home in time for tea, I think? Well you can see for yourselves in just 3 photos.
LET ME EXPLAIN!
There were just a few of them initially but they weren’t getting very far and as they steered this body toward the wall the obstacles that hindered progress got bigger and more difficult BUT amazingly the harder the going got the greater the reinforcements and eventually the task was completed successfully.. The colony had a feast that
If you have been following my recent blogs, especially last weeks you will know I have a passion for getting the message out. that we, believers, have a task to complete and it is only in being committed to that task together that we will get it done. Sometimes I feel like I am ‘flogging a dead horse’ as the cliché puts it..So I am willing to
try and get us to think about this from another angle.. From these ANTS! I’m in good company too! King Solomon to whom “God gave wisdom and understanding and knowledge as vast as the sand on the shore” tells us to go to the ant and learn lessons from it! The two occasions these little creatures are mentioned in the Bible you will find in Proverbs written by Solomon. Proverbs 30:25 and the one that I want you really to think about, Proverbs 6:6 “Go to the ant, you sluggard (Take a lesson from the ants you lazybones)! Consider her ways and be wise (watch it closely you will learn a thing or two)”
Just TWO things I want to leave with you this week..
1. The ants are tiny little creatures and even though they can lift individually way above their own weight, they do things better and do greater things TOGETHER. They pull their resources and skills and can accomplish amazing things far beyond their size. NOT one will shrink away from doing it’s bit in the task and it doesn’t even need anyone to tell it to do it..No excuses from these tiny insects! Have a read at the verses that follow in Proverbs 6! “It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.” v7-11.
Come on wake up, unfold those arms and get to work!!
YOUR CHURCH WANTS YOU!
2. The ant just NEVER gives up..I watched those ants in our complex for hours. I mean it hours they strained and struggled, this was too important, they needed to bring ‘the bacon home’ OK not kosher but you know what I mean!!! Do you not get so fed up, sick sore and tired with yourself, never mind others, when we give up so easily..A critical word said, a plan that didn’t go the way you though it might at the beginning, or that guy you witnessed too and seemed to be interested just went off to his mates laughing at you. OR even sadder are those times when you don’t even try??? I’m always amazed at my grandkids when you take them out to a restaurant and when they look at the menu decide there is nothing on it they like..Well I don’t like that, or that’s not nice?? Hey, how do they know that?? They have never tried it???? So to hear the same sort of thing from Christians. “It’ll never work!” “I could never do that!” How do they know, well they will NEVER know with that attitude…The task you and I are called to do is too important, we need to be committed and to persevere until it is done..OK!
YOUR CHURCH NEEDS YOU!
So there you are now, TWO lessons I am asking you to consider this week.
“Go to the ant..... consider its ways and be wise!”
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